Adrian Moza Of Flipsnack On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales

An Interview With Orlando Zayas

Never stop learning. Digital marketing and the online world is ever evolving. There’s always something to improve on and there’s always something new happening. In order to keep up you need to continuously read and stay informed about new trends and new developments.

Marketing a product or service today is easier than ever before in history. Using platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads, a company can market their product directly to people who perfectly fit the ideal client demographic, at a very low cost. Digital Marketing tools, Pay per Click ads, and email marketing can help a company dramatically increase sales. At the same time, many companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools often see disappointing results.

In this interview series called “How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales”, we are talking to marketers, advertisers, brand consultants, & digital marketing gurus who can share practical ideas from their experience about how to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing, PPC, & email.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adrian Moza, COO of Flipsnack.

Adrian Moza is COO at Flipsnack. He is passionate about technology, marketing and streamlining business operations. When he is not working, he enjoys playing video games, watching fantasy or SciFi movies and all things sports, especially soccer. Adrian has been working in the industry for more than 15 years.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I got hired right after high school, in 2006. I was very lucky to be given the opportunity to start working for a company as a Flash developer, despite my lack of experience and very basic programming skills. But what I lacked in knowledge I compensated with a desire to learn about the internet, programming and the startup world. That’s when I discovered that even though I like technical challenges I might not want to be a developer. I then transferred to the technical support team, and that was a significant moment in my career. It helped me understand and value the customer’s point of view. That background has helped me immensely when later I became product owner for one of the company’s projects. Later I became head of the team, and then PO .

After a few years I joined the Flipsnack project and then I became COO.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

Looking back sometimes what jumps out at you is the things you didn’t do. I was recently looking back at how Flipsnack evolved over the years and I noticed that in early 2015 the website had only four main pages: ​​homepage, pricing, examples, business. Now we have hundreds of pages that we use for acquisition and I can’t help but smile when I look at these numbers.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I would mention two people that have helped me greatly at the beginning of my career, and especially as I took on a more prominent role in Flipsnack. But there are many other teammates who helped me and who I learned from.

Ann Bob was at the time the Product manager. She saw something in me so she invited me to join this project as a product owner. I’m grateful for that and for this wonderful opportunity. She taught me a lot and gave me all the resources I needed at that point. I remember how impressed I was when I went with her to a conference in New York and how much I learnt during that trip.

Another person that I’d like to mention is Gabriel Ciordas, the founder of the company who trusted me and who helped build the confidence I needed at the beginning of this journey.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Besides the software that stands out with its interactive features, the company culture is another thing that makes us unique. We truly like to be in each other’s company. We celebrate our achievements together, big and small. It’s not just business milestones, targets reached or promotions, people are bringing in cake and drinks, sweets and snacks to celebrate things like getting a good grade on an exam. We recently even had a colleague who wanted to celebrate his Covid vaccine. These are small things that might seem unimportant, but I think it’s super important for us to laugh together, share stories and make the workplace a space where you can enjoy yourself.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Self motivation — This is what drives me and makes me a better leader, year over year. I have this passion for growth and I truly enjoy learning and trying new things.
• Motivating the team — We recently encountered a challenge. One of our competitors started to outperform us for a money-making category of keywords that we have been totally owning the #1 rank for, for a very long time. We were frustrated and upset about it and it didn’t take long for me to figure out that I wasn’t the only person feeling this way; the team was too. So we got together to talk about it, and I encouraged them to believe in themselves because we’re better and to not dwell in those negative feelings. Instead we made an actionable plan.
• Honesty and integrity — I expect my team to be honest and direct, whether they have an issue or if they have a different opinion than me. One way in which I encourage it is by being assertive myself. As a leader you have to be. At times it means dealing with uncomfortable situations and talking about issues in a direct manner, in order to fix them.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes! There’s always something new and exciting going on at Flipsnack.

We’re working on an exciting new project for real estate companies that will make it possible for them to automate the production of interactive listing presentations, while keeping them on brand. We already have integrations with MLS databases, and the next step will be to make it as easy as possible for real estate agents to speed up the process and to keep it really simple.

We’re also currently running a two-week in-house contest, during which multiple teams of two-seven teammates are working on bringing their ideas for Flipsnack to life. The product team has previously listened to pitches and validated the ideas that are worked on and being developed, so we know that these features will bring value to the customer. This is giving employees a chance to advocate for their ideas, to have a direct impact on how Flipsnack is developed and try on a new role during the project. That’s empowering and it has been encouraging to see the enthusiasm of the teams.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns often see disappointing results. In your opinion, what are a few of the biggest mistakes companies make when they first start out with digital marketing? If you can, please share an example for each.

One of the biggest common mistakes I see about digital marketing is not measuring results. Or looking only at the positive results and trying to interpret everything in a positive way. It’s a rookie mistake, but it happens too often when a team is just starting out.

Another thing, often correlated with the lack of experience, is not having a clear strategy, with clear objects and key results. It happened to us, trying to juggle 20 different things that had nothing in common with each other and that were not part of a strategy. It’s not that those things were bad, it’s just that they were not part of a strategy, so our work was not focused; it was fragmented and not likely to lead to any big win.

I’ve also seen marketing campaigns that are not specific enough to be successful. The message and targeting are super important. If not paying enough attention, it may lead to campaigns that are too general or too broad to be effective.

Another important aspect when running a campaign is not paying attention to the funnel. Is the ad relevant for that particular stage of the funnel? What about the landing page? Is there a smooth transition between them?

Not knowing who you are as a brand and who your audience is, what they think about your product/ solution is another big issue. It sounds very basic and you wouldn’t think this is a common mistake, but I’ve seen it many times. It takes an experienced team to avoid these mistakes.

If you could break down a very successful digital marketing campaign into a “blueprint”, what would that blueprint look like? Please share some stories or examples of your ideas.

Every successful marketing campaign should start with a plan. Our marketing team has developed a sort of a blueprint for a marketing campaign plan and we use it at the earliest stages to determine the validity and the potential results of a marketing campaign.

This is what it contains:

1. A summary of the campaign.
2. Main objective; Secondary objectives (if any).
3. 2–3 KPIs based on which we will evaluate the success of the campaign. The KPIs should be relevant, specific, measurable.
4. Time and duration.
5. Campaign plan — a detailed timeline plan, that should include all of the relevant stages pre-launch, during the campaign and post-campaign as well as resources needed, people involved, responsibilities, marketing channels etc.
6. Budget.
7. Estimated ROI or estimated results if the purpose of the campaign is not generating revenue.

Oftentimes while working with this blueprint it becomes apparent right from the start or before implementation that a campaign might not work or that an idea needs tweaking.

Let’s talk about Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) for a bit. In your opinion which PPC platform produces the best results to increase sales?

For us Google Ads produces the best results, but I’m sure it’s not the same for every business. I think generally ads perform better if the platform lists the ad in a native way, making it look similar to an organic result, post or article.

Can you please share 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful PPC campaign?

1. Defining your goal — whether it’s conversions, driving traffic, lead generation or brand awareness. This will help you decide targeting, messaging and measuring the impact of the campaign. It also decisive for the bidding type.

2. Finding the best keywords / keyword research, all based on knowing your audience. Mention the keywords in the ad text as well, and taylor the message to the audience, so that they resonate with it.

3. Making sure that the tracking is set up and working properly.

4. Continuously keep an eye on campaigns and optimize, optimize, optimize.

Let’s now talk about email marketing for a bit. In your opinion, what are the 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful email marketing campaign that increases sales?

1. Writing an attractive subject line — without it the open rate stays low and it will not drive the expected results.
2. Segmentation and targeting is key. Make sure the message you’re sending is relevant for the audience.
3. Make your CTA clear and powerful, highlighting the value of the offer.

What are the other digital marketing tools that you are passionate about? If you can, can you share with our readers what they are and how to best leverage them?

Google Marketing platform is so powerful that it has to be listed at the top. It doesn’t matter how small or big a business is, they are bound to use at least some of the marketing tools provided by Google: Search Console, Analytics, Ads, Tag Manager or the G Suite.

Apart from these we love Semrush and we found it to be particularly helpful for us in our growth journey. We use it for keyword research, keyword tracking, content optimization, competitor research and more. We also use Intercom a lot for marketing automation, so I’d recommend using it or a similar tool, like Hubspot. It allows you to send targeted messages directly in-app based on certain user characteristics or user actions. Very powerful!

Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer or as a manager? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I compiled a list of 5 things you need to create a successful career either in digital marketing or management.

1. Never stop learning. Digital marketing and the online world is ever evolving. There’s always something to improve on and there’s always something new happening. In order to keep up you need to continuously read and stay informed about new trends and new developments.
2. Keep an open mind, and try new things. I’m excited whenever someone from the team is telling me they want to run an experiment to test an idea. Sometimes I intuitively know that an idea is not going to work but unless I have very good arguments not to do it, I’ll keep an open mind about it. If it works out, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
3. Try to get to know as much as possible. In order to be a very good marketer or manager you can’t just learn one thing. You can’t be a great content writer if you don’t know anything about email marketing, SEO or advertising. Becoming a specialist or an expert in one marketing area will often mean having a great understanding of what marketing in general is and how it applies to multiple channels. For me, I had to learn a little bit about marketing, a little bit about sales, UX-UI and so on. Before you become a specialist, you need a good, solid foundation of the general things.
4. You can’t know everything. No matter how hard you try, you can’t be an expert on everything. So work with people who know more than you do. Acknowledge your own strengths and weaknesses, and work with those people who are experts in their field, instead of trying to do everything on your own.
5. Always track and measure results. Keeping an eye on numbers and analyzing the performance is key. You can’t progress and get better results if you don’t check to see what’s working and what isn’t

What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?

Most of my reading consists of online articles (moz, semrush, search engine round table, sem journal, hubspot and many others). I particularly enjoy books written by CEOs and founders of other SaaS companies. I find their stories inspiring and I love the fact that their writing comes from their own experience, and it’s full of examples that I can relate to. These books aren’t just marketing theory (which is also great, don’t get me wrong), they talk about real life experiences, business challenges and solutions.

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Use less paper and plastic, and be mindful of the planet! Taking care of the planet by recycling and not wasting resources could lead to the most good for the generations to come. My heart breaks when I see illegal, aggressive deforestation and I wish this will stop soon. If we could influence more people to go paperless and use Flipsnack that would be awesome!

Even though we’ve evolved so much over the years, sometimes us humans still act like we’re in the dark ages. We focus on our petty differences and we fight wars over natural resources and ignore the fact that there are still nations in which there’s malnutrition and hunger. In an ideal world we’d be focusing on common, selfless goals for the human race, such as resolving these issues as well as technological advancement, colonizing other planets, traveling at warp speed and finding cures for terrible diseases.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow me on Linkedin and Twitter! And check out Flipsnack at www.flipsnack.com

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!

Thank you for this opportunity to share my story!

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Adrian Moza Of Flipsnack On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, &… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.